As a new 4-th generation (4G) communication standard, WiMAX has drawn a great concern of telecommunication providers and equipment manufacturers over the world and thus dominate the wireless wide band field. FIG. 1 is a schematic view of the structure of the existing WiMAX network. As shown in FIG. 1, a WiMAX network may mainly consist of a plurality of network elements, such as a Mobile Station (MS), a Base Station (BS), an Access Gateway (AGW, not shown in FIG. 1), an authenticator, and an Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) server, etc. The AGW, BS and authenticator are located in an Access Service Network (ASN), and the AAA server is located in a Connection Service Network (CSN).
When the MS initially enters the network, the network will assign an authenticator and a home AAA (HAAA) server in the ASN to authenticate the MS, both of which are referred to as an anchor authenticator of the MS. Before the life cycle or timer for some security parameters expires, the MS or the network side will have to initiate re-authentication. At this time, authenticator relocation may occur along with the re-authentication. Accordingly, a new authenticator may become the anchor authenticator of the MS.
At present, in some scenarios, re-authentication occurs along with the anchor authenticator relocation, while in other scenarios, anchor authenticator relocation is performed without re-authentication. For example, in the case where the anchor authenticator, an anchor data channel functionality and an anchor paging controller are in a same entity gateway, relocation of the anchor data channel functionality and the anchor paging controller may occurs without re-authentication.
In some scenarios in practice, anchor authenticator relocation may be necessary, but it is unnecessary for other logic entities, such as the data channel functionality and the anchor paging controller, to be relocated. Currently, there is no implementation which is directed to individual anchor authenticator relocation without re-authentication.